Expand Your Life, Break Comfort Zones

What exactly is a comfort zone?

Wikipedia says: "A person’s personality can be described by his or her comfort zones. Highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish. A comfort zone is a type of mental conditioning that causes a person to create and operate mental boundaries. Such boundaries create an unfounded sense of security. Like inertia, a person who has established a comfort zone in a particular axis of his or her life, will tend to stay within that zone without stepping outside of it."

This basically means a comfort zone is what you’re easily and habitually willing to do or try. Successful people practice pushing themselves, and have very flexible comfort zones. Not-so-successful people do not push themselves and have very rigid comfort zones.

So… are you feeling stagnant? Uninspired? bored perhaps? Many people feel this way. Often times artists will talk of feeling this way and stop themselves from producing art for a time. or writers may experience what they call “writer’s block.” Or musicians, or whoever – it applies pretty universally to everyone at some point or another in their physical life.

Rainy Day Example Of Breaking Comfort Zones

Let’s say it’s pouring rain outside. More than likely, if you live in a big city, you would not come up with a ton of interesting things to do in the rain. You would possibly *want* to, or your body might *need* to get outside, but a large portion of people in the world would force themselves to be limited, kept inside – possibly bored, possibly resenting their choice or the weather, or in general letting some drops of water prevent them from being/doing what they truly want.

There are tons of ways to address this situation though, in a way that feels good. Let’s take a look at some examples.

A Writer Breaks Rainy Weather Comfort

Let’s say a writer decides to sit on the porch in the rain… she might be blessed with one of the best metaphors, similes or phrases she’s ever had just by *experiencing the rain* beat down on the ground outside.

Up.
Falling
Is
Drop
Rain-
One
Only
There.
Aren’t
But they
Falling
Raindrops
There are more
It’s quiet and cool.
Inside the raindrop
The same raindrops.
Thousand others,
Rising above the
To be different.
Is falling up,
Raindrop.
The

-poem read from bottom to top, by un-alphabetical.

Musician Tries Something New

Or what if a trance musician took that very same walk in the rain, and produces this:
4 strings – Let It Rain [youtube video] or [rapidshare] or this: Advance One – After The Rain [mp3 download]

Or perhaps in a slightly different take on things, he decided to go visit a friend, and despite the looming storm clouds, he was not swayed by the rains seeming attempt to ‘dampen their plans’ – he made the trip, had a great and lively time with an old friend, and he got caught in heavy rain in the traffic on the way home. It took a little longer to get home than usual, but instead of being tired, he was invigorated from the visit and proceeded to write some music, such as this:

Inspiring something like: Counting Crows – Raining In Baltimore [mp3 download]

Artists Are Good At Expanding Comfort Zones Too

Or maybe a fine artist (Tatyana Polukarova) had just finished watching the rain through a window at a cottage somewhere…

More Examples – MMA Fighters, Cubicle Workers, and Frat Guys

Simply by embracing the fact that it is raining, taking normal limiting fear-of-getting-wet or feeling of being constrained by the rain, and looking at as an experience or a gift, it becomes a gift, a springboard that can help beauty-expressers create some of their best work.

This type of creativity, while being its own reward, can also really launch a person forward in life.

You may be thinking from my previous examples that this may only apply to artists, but it applies to everything. Maybe an MMA fighter decides to practice in the rain instead the gym for once, and because of this, his stance, stability and balance become greatly increased as he has to focus his energy and attention on the balls of his feet more than usual. (See Fedor`s UFC training.)

It could be that the husband, in a bored stagnant marriage where the couple doesn`t talk, chooses to go out, with an umbrella, and he sees an older lady getting soaked walking along the sidewalk. He offers to share his umbrella, they become friends, she insists on giving him a 10 dollar bill for his assistance. He goes home and shares this small experience with his wife who is a) overjoyed to have him sharing experiences with her and b) impressed with his kindness and generosity. They are closer than ever.

Maybe a group of guys wanted to play sports, but rain looms overhead. They go out anyway, meet, play 5-10min of sports, and if it doesn’t work out at least they’re socializing on a day they would’ve sat around. Or maybe the clouds break and sports works out beautifully giving them the activity they so desired. Or maybe this particular weekend one of the group is back from out of town, they all share work-stories and realize the out-of-towner had job-offers for them that would not have even come up had they not met!

Here’s an example of something more subtle: a cubicle worker who hunches over a desk all day, listens to what his body desires, and simply goes for a much needed walk which helps his posture and lets the bunched up tension leave his body, preventing a back-injury the next morning — had he not walked all that tension and bad posture would’ve had him feeling pain when awoke — and he prevented it without even consciously realizing what injury he had prevented by taking that walk.

A rainy day is just an example. You can push your comfort zones on giving compliments, marketing your business, or letting go of control over something. Successful people push their comfort zones in these areas… do you?

In Conclusion

Try new things, put fear aside. If you’ve never played pool and ‘suck at it’ — play anyway, it might blow your mind just how many interesting experiences and good could come from it. You might meet the hottest girl or guy of your life in that pool hall.

If you’ve always been scared to experiment sexually, show some trust in your partner and choose to be open to their ideas, you might reach some new height of pleasure, or even find you *still* don’t like it which might lead the two of you to a discussion realizing that you got into the relationship for wrong reasons, and are much better suited with somebody else.

If you always walk around with your head down, and dart your eyes away from other people on the street… try the opposite! head high, eyes locked, smile and hold gaze with anyone you meet. or just randomly say hi to people if you’re generally quiet.

I highly recommend if you’re interested in learning how to break out of a rut in life, that you check out my life-internships or grab one of our SpiritProducts, tools to help you succeed.

Broaden one’s horizons. Diversify one’s experiences.
Break out of the comfort zone. How often do you comment on blog posts? This is a chance to broaden your comfort zone, right now! Tell us your experiences with comfort zones in the comments!